{"id":22,"date":"2014-12-04T17:11:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T17:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dracony.org\/?p=22"},"modified":"2014-12-04T17:15:33","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T17:15:33","slug":"a-checklist-for-framework-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/a-checklist-for-framework-developers\/","title":{"rendered":"A checklist for framework developers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, there have been some new frameworks being posted on reddit, with the expected result of receiving a lot of hate and criticism. I can kind of understand both sides here, since just about a year ago I&#8217;ve seen similar responses towards my <a href=\"http:\/\/phpixie.com\">PHPixie<\/a>. Since then the flames calmed down and it has now a considerable userbase with 386 installs in the last 30 days. The important part here is to be able to take in constructive criticism and carry on making your project better. I&#8217;ve learned a few things the hard way as I went, and I&#8217;d like to share them with other people willing to release their brainchild to the world.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Tests<\/strong> &#8211; you must have those to be taken seriously. Even if it&#8217;s the first version, alpha or anything. The tests are the first indicator that you are putting real effort in<\/li>\n<li><strong>Find a niche<\/strong> &#8211; There has to be something about your framework that makes it stand out, and you have to focus on it. I really pushed a lot of effort behind the &#8220;great performance&#8221; argument. I also submitted it to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techempower.com\/benchmarks\/\">Techempower Framework Benchmark Suite<\/a> to prove it. Don&#8217;t ever state something while not having anything to back it up with<\/li>\n<li><strong>Read a book<\/strong> &#8211; there should be no singletons, god objects, shared state or anything like that in a modern app<\/li>\n<li><strong>Write docs<\/strong> &#8211; That includes writing docblocks, generating an API documentation from those docblocks, writing some tutorials and a nice about page.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be prepared to compare it to existing frameworks<\/strong> &#8211; there has to be something better with your approach. If there isn&#8217;t don&#8217;t bother releasing it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Use PSR-2<\/strong> &#8211; I made the mistake of writing PHPixie in the style I liked and then had to rewrite it. The style must suite the majority, not just you. You&#8217;re not making it for yourself<\/li>\n<li><strong>Don&#8217;t expect any help<\/strong> or pull requests from the very start<\/li>\n<li><strong>Support<\/strong> your users as much as possible, at least install some forums script to be able to talk to them<\/li>\n<li><strong>Buy a domain<\/strong> and spend some time on site design. Make it look legit<\/li>\n<li><strong>Commit frequently<\/strong> &#8211; Your Github history has to indicate your project is not dead<\/li>\n<li><strong>Participate in the community<\/strong> &#8211;  You can&#8217;t expect people to help you with your project if you ignore theirs<\/li>\n<li><strong>Don&#8217;t give up<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If this sounds like too much work, just pick a smaller project. It&#8217;s better to make a smaller masterpiece than a big ball of mud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, there have been some new frameworks being posted on reddit, with the expected result of receiving a lot of hate and criticism. I can kind of understand both sides here, since just about a year ago I&#8217;ve seen similar responses towards my PHPixie. Since then the flames calmed down and it has now a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dracony.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}